THE 

Barren Ideal 



GEORGE LAW 





Class 

Book i 

GopyrightN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE BARREN IDEAL 



In offering this little volume to 
others besides the one for whom it 
was written, the author does not 
entertain either the hope or the de- 
sire of changing any one's belief or 
of converting any one to a cause. 
Nor does he intend this as an ar- 
gument for a new belief or a new 
religion; since he is persuaded that 
to argue such matters is futile even 
when successful. But for some in 
whose hearts suffering has been ar- 
guing, and who are not satisfied by 
old beliefs and standards, here is 
an answer which holds happiness 
and joy in its application. 



ipElE l ! ==dl ■ ZZH IE ■ I E3E tJ 

I he Barren Ideal 

By 

Cjeorge Law 



I 



□ Symbolic Design and Sketches e 

D By Mary Carlin g 



The Marvimon Foundation 

Arcadia, California 
U=ir=i r= i i===i i =11 » n— i i — II 



4 



Copyright, 1914, by George Law 
All rights reserved 

Published December 1st., 1914 



PRESS OF THE 

Grafton Publishing Corporation 

LOS ANGELES, U. S. A. 



DEC -7 1914 
©CI.A387850 

7n> '■ 



To A. C. 

If I seem to declare my opinions 
upon certain open questions with- 
out due discussion from every side, 
it is because such discussion would 
distort the proportions of my de- 
sign. Read me as hostily as you 
will — only persist to the end and 
there make your judgment. 




The 
Barren Ideal 



Madame, 

You supped with me 
this evening, — h ere by 
my window opening 
through plum blossoms 
upon a dun sky after our 
storm, you minced in your 
dainty way at the French 
toast and tea; and my 
manners were ever so 
much better for your presence. 

Madame, I want to talk the 
scheme over with you. Ah! if 
you were only with me our 
conversations would keep it 
continually before us weav- 




12 THE BARREN IDEAL 

ing it through and through our lives, which 
is the only effectual way. It is all so simple 
and yet so complex and the whole matter 
so interwoven with one's own temper and 
custom! I may seem pessimistic; yet, in truth, 
a firm grasp upon my scheme transmutes it into 
the truest optimism. But these terms are both 
unsatisfactory. We should not accept or reject 
schemes of life on these qualifications merely. It 
is the old human fraility of fashioning philos- 
ophy according to desires. What is truth may 
and doubtless does partake — at a rough glance, 
before we have accustomed ourselves to it — some- 
what of both qualities. Optimism is that bright- 
eyed, athletic youth doffing his hat to Esther as 
she whizzes by in her friend's car, and a moment 
later dropping his coin with a cheery word in the 
hat of the legless vender of pencils on the corner. 
Pessimism is that lean, virtuous man standing by 
with his hands in the pockets of his short, black 
overcoat. Optimism says "I am," and having paid 
his tithe goes buoyantly on his way; Pessimism 
says "I am not, nor you, nor the beggar," and 
sighs in his contemplation. Both are right and 
both are wrong. But has not the one we are 
looking for the bright vigor of the first and the 
thoughtful virtue of the other in so serene an ad- 
justment to actual conditions that he is free to 
do, and do effectively, what may lie within his 



THE BARREN IDEAL 13 

power towards bettering them? For a time we 
are, for eternities we are not. Obviously both 
considerations must be taken into account in con- 
structing a scheme of life. But we dare not be 
carried away by the bright surety in the one, nor 
overwhelmed by the dark uncertainty in the other. 
"Life is a glorious thing," chants an author, 
making this the refrain for his books. But the 
experience of life into which we are introduced 
is neither glorious nor inglorious : it is simply as 
it is, containing somewhat of both qualities. We 
do well, however, to dream of what it might be 
purged of all its incongruities ; and we dream to 
purpose when we measure ideals along side of 
facts to introduce step by step what of the 
former can be assimilated. 

(2) 

But to talk over the scheme of the present 
taking into account those complications that 
through fraility and unripeness in nature we 
find necessary: First of all there is Life, inde- 
structible Life, inclusive of everything. This 
Life as a whole must have its purpose and ob- 
ject, but these of course we can not draw even 
remotely near to knowing. But we may safely 
say that the only reason of our being here is to 
further this purpose, and we may well conjecture 
that we are so fashioned as to make the attain- 



14 THE BARREN IDEAL 

merit of what proves most desirable to us — when 
we see clearly what our greatest desire really is 
— an instrument to this end; so that by merely 
seeking what we ourselves truly want we may be 
certain of being hand in hand with indestructi- 
ble processes; and may even feel security as to 
our individual parts. An old religionist has well 
said, "It is good to believe that that ideal towards 
which we are striving is the goal intended by na- 
ture." For we are very little of our own inten- 
tions; but believing that our intentions are also 
nature's, makes us at once strong and effective. 
Of course nature runs according to vast laws in 
which the well-being of the individual is all but 
lost sight of. Beings modified through infinite 
causes interoperating to produce infinite effects 
which act again as further causes, face the con- 
ditions of their precarious existences, some en- 
during, some failing, but all sooner or later re- 
cast into the general mould. The part, the only 
part that the rose, as a rose, has in life, is in being 
a rose ; so with man, his share of life consists only 
in being a man. 

(3) 

More than this life there is nothing for you 
and me. Our individualities are here and now 
just as they appear to be; they were not before 
this state ; they shall not be hereafter ; more than 



THE BARREN IDEAL 15 

this life there is nothing for you and me. But 
there is a catch in this thought. For Life, the 
general substance of Universal Life, there is 
continuity; it is, as I have called it, indestructi- 
ble; but for you and me this is all. We may 
believe our wits and senses. Where Life is 
going, why it is at all, and What it accomplishes 
through your existence and mine, can not be 
known. That there is purpose, and magnificent 
purpose, we can not be sane and doubt; but to 
play our parts as human beings is the most within 
our power, and upon our not over- or under- 
doing this hangs the contentment that we reap 
through our days. From this point on we may 
investigate what and where we will ; for the ques- 
tion simply resolves itself into this, How may I 
make the most of my life? We must find out 
as nearly as possible what constitutes that most 
and what correlatives there may be to this in our 
desires. It is simple. We need not bother with 
hereafters; for there are none for us. As to 
hereafters we may trust life to take its course. 
We may now believe our senses, our reason, our 
intelligence, and figure out a course or courses 
eminently sane and effectual. 

(4) 

Though our desire is the same, our ideas as 
to its accomplishment vary infinitely. This life 



16 THE BARREN IDEAL 

is all we have; we want to make the most of it. 
Here is an abstract yearning for which our con- 
crete equivalents are short and imperfect. We 
go here and there, try this and that, and, observ- 
ing the consequences of our efforts, feel our way 
onward in the school of experience. Though we 
see that happiness consists, if in anything, in ar- 
riving at the point where we may let go with- 
out uncertainty lest images of anything left 
incomplete or poorly done, or of capacities not 
pushed to their limit, may arise to disturb our — I 
can not say repose, but settling into repose; 
though we see that contentment unto death con- 
sists in making the most of our lives, still are we 
too prone to distraction amid the clumsy details 
of experience. We are too easily contented — 
not contented in the depths of our heart; but 
with the heart torpid, so that infrequently or 
never does it prompt us to its inmost yearning, 
we permit ourselves to be contentedly filled with 
the mere friction of the passing hour. In youth 
our vigorous senses intoxicate us; in middle life 
the game of worldly achievement takes our all, 
and in old age we are pampered by those agents 
which it has been our life's work to bring about 
us: but sometimes in death the heart shakes off 
its lethargy and, baring the emptiness of the 
years and the hollowness of their product as com- 
pared to the demands of its native yearning, 



THE BARREN IDEAL 17 

throws about death, which as a simple action in 
nature and the goal of individualized life, should 
be easy and acceptable, a pall of abject terror. 
It readily happens that this course of four de- 
clines down which our lives slip so easily is, in the 
chance of experience, sometimes interrupted to 
our own benefit. Thus ill-health prevailing 
upon the appetites of youth, disaster thwarting 
the enterprises of middle life, melancholy set- 
tling upon senility, and even a brooding death, 
may arouse the heart to seek out the purity and 
splendor of its potential longings. In the later 
stages little more than the solemn joy of paying 
reverence to the ideal may be accomplished; in 
the middle stage, the richness of a career may be 
saved ; while in the first a whole life may be cast 
into a truer mould. Thus sometimes do afflic- 
tions save us from ourselves. 

(5) 

The fact is we do not know What we want. 
We may think we do, but as often as we gain the 
objects of our desires we realize our mistake, un- 
til finally, reaching a point where we are willing 
to confess that we do not know, we come nearest 
to knowing. It should be our first step, there- 
fore, to find out what we want, and when collect- 
edly we glance either backward at what is, or for- 
ward at what may be, a lifetime of futile experi- 



18 THE BARREN IDEAL 

merits and wasted energy, we are willing to take 
this step. But how may we find out what we 
want? We know that to feel our way along 
weighing experiences and their consequences, is 
the way established in nature. It is the way fol- 
lowed by our forefathers, by their forefathers, 
by theirs and so on back to original sources. Ob- 
viously we do not have to creep through past 
lessons all over again. Many of them we in- 
herit, many we absorb as we grow up, and many 
more we may glean from a reflective consideration 
of the known experiences of mankind. Bringing 
what we collect from all sources of experience to 
the test of that intellectual grasp, which we en- 
joy in common, of the things that lie just out- 
side the border of experience, we may indeed 
draw very near to discovering what our elusive 
desires, mixed of the earthy and the etherial, may 
be; we may without doubt discover what we do 
not want and begin our own experiments, as 
should be, in the very vanguard of the race. 

It is a more agreeable task to remove the ob- 
stacles from the paths of our ready inclinations 
than to beat about in the hidden recesses of con- 
sciousness to find out just what our true desires 
may be; and this is why we enlist so readily 
under accepted standards and comport ourselves 
one with another with such dignity and peremp- 
tory certainty, just as if our aims had an irre- 



THE BARREN IDEAL 19 

futable sanction somewhere and we knew what 
we were about. Frequently must we pause, 
observe, consider. That this life is all we have, 
is an axiom we do well to remember. But pro- 
nounce it and up springs the corollary — we must 
make the most of it. In each individual case the 
issue hinges upon happiness or unhappiness, suc- 
cess or failure, willingness to pass the way of 
indestructible processes — or terror. It is good 
to remember that the Universal is not without 
purpose; it is good to be friendly with the Uni- 
versal and to associate our will to Its will: and 
when we remember further that without doubt 
the Universal is so disposed that what is most 
desirable to you and me accomplishes when 
gained yours and my share in the Great Purpose, 
how simple it all becomes! 




Do you remember that au- 
£ ^ J^^KT tumn afternoon when you, un- 
f*s ^J^ known, unknowing, answered 

my singing call by appearing 
in the doorway of your sister's house ? Above my 
desk in the cabin was a picture of Annie Laurie 
upon the Maxwelton braes, the mists of the sea 
in the grasses about her feet, her slender form 
caressed in the arms of the wind, a few strands of 
hair loose upon her cheeks, and in her eyes that 
bright, half -wistful expression, so divinely alive, 
as if she were seeing the powers behind the ele- 
ments themselves. Once I asked you, so teas- 
ingly for me, if you could guess of whom that 
picture reminded me. Whether you had an ink- 
ling or no, you answered nay; and whether from 
philosophy or no, you did not press me to learn. 
Well ! thus you stood, upon your lips the sugges- 
tion of a smile such as would invite one to quiet 
words and gentle manners. You were dressed 
simply, even plainly, and I never saw you other- 
wise; but I never thought of your clothes; I 



22 THE BARREN IDEAL 

thought only of, I marveled at, the beauty of a 
mind in its so truly feminine way of reaching out 
for purity and truth, not as for entertainment or 
for study, or even for the sake of principle, but 
as for nourishment and protection. And do you 
remember how once, after we had learned to 
roam the hills and arroyos together, we made an 
engagement to visit an Indian ruins several 
miles distant, and your sister not, as luck would 
have it, being gone that day, we set out in the 
disapprobation of her frowns and silence? But 
the effect of these we speedily shook off, and I 
recall our neglecting Maeterlinck for the im- 
portance of our own thoughts. I think we took 
our supper — the details slip me. As we sat 
upon the slope of the mountain somewhat up the 
canyon, so that we could look back upon the lone 
stone house and the mounds of the buried village, 
the chill of the winter evening creeping into the 
air, lowing cattle came down from the mountains 
on the opposite side and, pausing to drink in the 
arroyo, climbed up and onward across the mesa. 
And you recited the first stanza of Gray's Elegy, 
your eyes alight with the poetic beauty in the 
scene about us. We had reasoned that day until 
we had come to the startling conclusion that am- 
bition — that thing so treasured of youth — is 
really a very unfortunate thing to possess. But 
we did not mean all ambition. We meant mere- 



THE BARREN IDEAL 23 

ly that blind worldly ambition that panders to 
those ready inclinations, which when realized dis- 
close only emptiness and a waste of energy. But 
to restrain ambition until we have sought out the 
way, or to direct it into the channels of this 
search, finally to let loose its governable enthus- 
iasm upon the discovered Ideal — this is what we 
intended. 

Why is it that we find it so hard to discover 
what is worth while, what really constitutes hap- 
piness, what will satisfy our nature? Of others 
rushing upon various of those experiences that 
we have left behind, we are accustomed to re- 
mark, Ah ! if only they will not be disallusioned ! 
thus showing either that we do not credit our own 
words in full or that we wish for others what, if 
we truly analyse our desires, we do not wish for 
ourselves, namely, to pass life wandering amid 
illusions. For it is because we are confronted 
on every side without and obsessed within with 
things which we are accustomed to make out to 
be what they are not, that our way is so difficult 
at every point. Not that we would take from 
youth the intoxication of eager senses abandoned 
to harmless usages, nor deprive maturer years of 
their natural ambitions; on the contrary we 
would indulge both as far as is necessary to sat- 
isfy the judgment of the inadequacy of such 



24 THE BARREN IDEAL 

transitory pursuits, so that with normal faculties 
and sane understanding, the judgment can turn 
to what is more worthy of its approval ; — though 
it is probable that the judgment will not abandon 
wholly any of the spontaneous usages appropri- 
ate to the different seasons of life, but will felic- 
tate all by rendering them subservient to its 
design. Thus though we perceive that our first 
step must be a rather impartial weighing of those 
pursuits to which our inclinations naturally lend 
themselves, we need not alarm our nature with 
apprehensions of severe abstinences and austere 
eliminations. We do not entertain the foolhardy 
desire to change nature; but that which we are 
according to nature — especially her peculiar way 
of tweaking us about with what so frequently 
proves not true but the semblance of true desires 
— we wish to understand. We will follow nature 
wherever she leads us if she will give us what 
we truly want ; and it may be that after a season 
of judicious restraint we may trust to her spon- 
taneity again. 

(3) 
More than this life there is nothing for you 
and me. But this may mean the nun in her 
cloister ; for who can say, observing the self -com- 
posed gait and very often sublimated content- 
ment of this creature, but what her sacrifice is the 
source of a refinement of happiness here and 



THE BARREN IDEAL 25 

now? Or this may mean the sensualist in his 
fleshpots ; for who can deny the palpable delight 
in present indulgence? But these extremists in 
choosing ways at variance with the normal con- 
stitution of the human being both err. The one 
has enslaved reason; the other has not exercised 
it; the nun, though she may not, though intend- 
ing to, have succumbed to the enervating super- 
stition of a life hereafter, nevertheless is deprived 
of the true measure of joy which coming to terms 
with death may mean ; the sensualist has not con- 
sidered the consequences of his excesses from the 
simplest physical disorders to the miseries of 
satiety ; in short, both are laboring under illusions 
and, as it happens here, the two extremest illu- 
sions with which we have to deal. On the one hand 
the sovereignty of imagination, on the other of 
animalism. The true course for the human be- 
ing establishes itself composedly between these 
two. 

"This hasteth to be; that other to have been; 
of that which is now becoming, even now some- 
what hath been extinguished. And wilt thou 
make thy treasure of any of those things?" sighs 
the Stoic Emperor. "I have seen all the works 
that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is 
vanity and a striving after wind," cries one who 
was in position to know. From these minds and 
from many others, but more emphatically still 



26 THE BARREN IDEAL 

from our own, do we discover the craving of the 
human heart for permanence ; and if there is one 
characteristic that would attach itself to any dis- 
coverable object of our true desire, it is this — 
the quality of being permanent. But we can not 
on this account, as in the tendency of the Stoics, 
despise those things, the materials of our activi- 
ties, which hasten away, some before some shortly 
after, we ourselves are gone; nor can we, with 
the religionists, turn wholly away from such 
things to the worship of the imagination, or, what 
is the same thing, the various cosmogonies sprung 
therefrom. That there are many and divers ex- 
planations of life and not merely a simple con- 
sistent and irrefutable one, is sufficient to betray 
their origin in the human fancy. But the very 
stress, as we accompany our reason to this point, 
that our inability to fathom puts upon the Un- 
knowable, prevents us from becoming gross ma- 
terialists. Still to an extent we see that we must 
be materialists, since it is with materials that we 
are constructed to occupy ourselves; and to des- 
pise necessity is that peevish folly which delib- 
erately chooses to be discontented rather than 
contented. 

And so, consideration of the rather paradox* 
ical situation in which we find ourselves, discov- 
ers a whole assortment of lesser illusions which 
we are accustomed to pursue under the standards 



THE BARREN IDEAL 27 

of our ready desires. Thus deeds for their own 
sake, or for the sake of their material products, 
— achievements of muscle or of intellect, whether 
through skill in affairs or artistic adeptness, all 
merely mundane things pursued for their own 
sake, can not really satisfy us ; we may be intox- 
icated by them, but sooner or later they will 
perish before our eyes, or we know that they will 
perish shortly after we are gone; or if the thing 
be a masterpiece of art, and at the same time 
merely mundane, — for this at once suggests the 
exception, — there are contemplative moments 
When, even if by some good fortune we have been 
made aware of its lasting qualities, the heart ex- 
presses only too clearly — and very often such 
expression becomes the masterpiece itself — its 
inability to rest content with any product or 
achieved fact, or indeed with any expression of 
itself which has become detached and is not still 
in living and growing association. This world is 
all we have; nevertheless our constitution is such 
that we can not be satisfied with the things in it. 
But our satisfaction must be found somewhere, 
somehow, in connection with the things of the 
world since these are all that we are certain of. 

(4) 

Everything is perishable. But what in all 
the order of perishable things is most nearly per- 



28 THE BARREN IDEAL 

manent? We are caught in the predicament of 
having only material things to work upon, with 
at the same time the necessity of satisfying our 
need therefrom; but since material things can 
not of themselves fulfill our requirements, the 
answer must lie in our manner of handling them, 
and the importance must attach not to what 
through ourselves we make of them, but to what 
through material things we make of ourselves — 
in a word, to character. We may depend upon 
this as upon nothing else discoverable to serve us 
faithfully and remain with us as long as we 
preserve loyalty to that soundness of judgment 
which enthrones character as the thing most worth 
having, as long as we are true to that clearness 
of vision which, so far, discovers character as the 
nearest answer to our want. And if now, some- 
what disappointed, you complain that character 
pertains only to the individual and perishes with 
the individual and hence has none of that quality 
of durability which the heart requires in its con- 
templation, — something more permanent than 
itself, — I can easily reassure you by leading you 
to see how character derives its power of satisfy- 
ing directly from the influence that it sheds 
abroad ; and if this influence is what it should be 
— as it will be if the character is what it should 
be — the influence will not only be active during 
the life of the individual but will persist undy- 



THE BARREN IDEAL 29 

ingly and weave itself into the things that are to 
be. We have only to trace the consequences of 
the lives and character of certain outstanding fig- 
ures in the world's history to be certain of this. 
Many perhaps have undying fame — Alexander, 
Napoleon; but that is somewhat different from 
the living influence of a Socrates or of an Epic- 
tetus. We purposely leave out of account those 
characters, so-called, which, far from cultivating 
qualities appropriately expressed in the positive 
term character, spend their lives heaping fuel 
upon the passions of brute instinct, and whose in- 
fluences blacken for a time the annals of history, 
but which are finally overcome by the persistency 
of influences according with principles favorable 
and not opposed to the continuance of life. We 
may make brief mention of philanthropy. Some 
men upon the summit of worldly success, perceiv- 
ing the hollowness of their gain, turn radically on 
their course ; whereas once they accumulated, now 
they give away, and in the form of institutes, uni- 
versities, libraries, associations for dispensing 
charity and the like, distribute their wealth 
among mankind. Whether their philanthropy 
does greater, equal, or less good than their greed 
did evil, is a matter for sociologists to figure out. 
We would only observe the actual influence of 
their lives as expressed by their character, how 
perhaps for a few ages it endures and then is dis- 



30 THE BARREN IDEAL 

integrated. But on the other hand, let a man 
be true to the dreams exhalted in his heart and 
his influence will be coextensive with the life of 
mankind. Because there are certain dreams that 
are immutable, and in the measure that we seek 
them out and be true to them, do we associate our 
wills with immutability. 

In short, the influence to be a lasting one 
must be effective. Unfortunately not all of the 
dreamers that history records have attained to 
this qualification. Many have dreamed too close ; 
and we purposely abstain from any discussion of 
those figures in history that have gained the 
superstitious worship of mankind. The founders 
of religions appear to illustrate better than any 
others the durability of an influence proceeding 
from a certain kind of character; but because 
they did not measure their dreams along side of 
facts, to apply their ideals as effectively as possi- 
ble, their efforts, as history shows, have proved 
more or less abortive, and save for stirring an in- 
dividual here and there, who has had the inclina- 
tion and the opportunity to penetrate to the 
heart of their doctrines, have established merely 
religious antinomies, which far from tending to- 
wards the progress of the race and the improve- 
ment of material conditions actually operate to 
drug the human intellect against these very ends. 



THE BARREN IDEAL 31 

We may worship these men, but our worship will 
not excuse the miscarriage of their ideals. Cer- 
tainly no blame attaches to the teachers them- 
selves for this ; they were largely what their time 
permitted them to be, and it is only in recent 
years that a change in the method of human in- 
vestigations has revealed the necessity of and the 
nearest truth as to the development and constitu- 
tion of society from its infancy on up ; and though 
we are no better fitted to conceive of ideals than 
were the ancients, — amid our more numerous dis- 
tractions hardly so susceptible, — still we know 
better now how to make an ideal take. 

More Godlike characters have lived and are 
living than any of us know about; and their ef- 
fectiveness may perhaps be accounted for by their 
obscurity. The greatest lives are not necessarily 
those lauded by fame. True greatness is hardly 
to be measured by human beings. It is that 
which irradiating from a life inweaves itself into 
the constitution of things making for their bet- 
terment. Sometimes the less it is to be seen, the 
more effectively it works. But the one from 
whom it flows understands it, and his bliss is not 
in the opinions of others but in actually feeling 
himself in living cooperation with that true de- 
sign of progress which makes for the betterment 
of man's lot in the world. It is a palpable bliss 
here and now, wholly free and within the oppor- 



32 THE BARREN IDEAL 

tunity of any one who has the will to shape his 
own character and give expression to it in true 
efforts. 

That which makes for the improvement of 
man's lot in the world — not your lot or my lot, 
but man's lot — unselfishness — that is the key. 
But a great deal more than this is needed. 
Nearly, if not every, heart is unselfish in its ori- 
gin; many, lots more than we suppose, escape 
the corroding effects of experience, and of those 
that have become cold and calculating, a great 
proportion is reclaimed ; in fact, the world is full 
of unselfish hearts — and every human heart in it 
is so potentially; but most of this unselfishness 
is unguided, so that its advances, not finding 
place in the practical design of nature, meet with 
rebuffs, and, the best intentions of an unselfish 
heart being continually confounded, it is no un- 
common thing for unselfishness to sour into bit- 
terness. So we hear that unselfishness does not 
pay. But when we ask the criers of this what 
does pay, they can not give us a satisfactory an- 
swer; or if they insist that they can, they are 
refuted in their lives. And so we fall back upon 
the examination of experience, their experience, 
every man's experience, but especially our own 
experience, and delve and digest there until we 
see that either unselfishness will pay or else noth- 
ing can pay; and if we are alive to our instinct 



THE BARREN IDEAL 33 

to be and make life yield its sweet, — which most 
of us have glimpsed in rare moments, — we will 
develope and exercise the caution and perspicuity 
necessary to make the expression of our unselfish- 
ness effective. 

For effectiveness is both the stamp of valid- 
ity and the guage of reward. Without effective- 
ness of expression, however sublime or passionate 
the ideal of unselfishness, there can be no security 
as to a vital, true and lasting influence; and we 
are robbed of that bliss of intimacy with living 
and growing power in lasting things, which 
comes nearest to being what we truly want. So 
to that design of character which we are fashion- 
ing through our use and handling of material 
things, effectiveness must be added, since with- 
out this our efforts are to no end and our desire 
remains unrealized. The one day to day pursuit, 
then, despite all else that is going on, should be 
character — character according to the essential 
quality of an influence that will last — unselfish- 
ness; but the effective character is at the same 
time many other things together with and sub- 
servient to unselfishness. To erect out of the ma- 
terials of our lives edifices lasting in the influ- 
ence that they will spontaneously irradiate is the 
task to set ourselves — a task requiring collected- 
ness, effort unceasing and enduring patience. 
But upon whether we succeed or not depends our 



34 THE BARREN IDEAL 

contentment; and let it only be added here that 
in the movement of a successful journeying for- 
ward there is contentment, of course. 

Further discussion would involve inquiries 
into the courting and the practical working out 
of what we may for convenience call the Way 
of Character — matters, though susceptible to 
some generalizations in which we may all join 
hands, yet for the most part appropriate for dis- 
cussion only from the standpoint of the individ- 
ual in his peculiarities of temperament and tal- 
ent and according to the particulars of his sur- 
roundings, his place, and obligations. Suffice it 
to say here that he Who is earnestly striving along 
the Way of Character will in his relations to 
others conform generally to the advice of Ham- 
let and "treat them better than they deserve" ; but 
wherein they impose or set themselves against 
his proper purpose, — impediments in the path of 
effective unselfishness, — he may even appear to 
the uninstructed selfish, after a peculiar manner, 
in meting out here no more than justice, — treat- 
ing them according to their deserts, — and with 
Aorrelius in looking upon them indifferently as 
upon wild animals or inclement weather. 

Though the practical bearings of the Way of 
Character may not be the same for any of us, 
still with illusions removed so that we are truly 
set upon this way, our very pursuit will resolve 



THE BARREN IDEAL 35 

itself into the means of putting the education and 
leisure necessary to explode illusions and gain a 
footing upon the Way of Character within the 
reach of others. No longer governed by those 
traditional standards which lead us to do what 
we do and seek what we seek for the sake of the 
things themselves, we will be careless of obtain- 
ing those superior privileges which it has been 
our custom to strive for — a custom largely re- 
sponsible for all our social ills ; and we may even 
be led to refrain from taking advantage of the 
superior opportunities brought about by accident 
of birth, and perhaps to seek for ourselves no 
greater share of the world's goods — so little do 
they mean to us — than that obtainable by the 
rudest workman. In the clearness of our vision 
we will be able like certain of the wise men of 
old "both to abstain from and to enjoy those 
things which many are too weak to abstain from 
and can not enjoy without excess." 

Men strive for this and that, and it is well 
enough: men differ in their aspirations. Every- 
thing is impermanent. The temper and quality 
of a man are told by the degree of permanency 
in the things he aspires to. Pleasure from in- 
dulgence of the senses is perhaps the least per- 
manent of all; then worldly achievements and 
intellectual attainments in their order. The in- 
fluence proceeding out of a sublimely unselfish 



36 THE BARREN IDEAL 

life is without doubt the most permanent thing. 
Men strive for this when they see that nothing 
short of this can satisfy them; and we have only 
to look closely to see how large a part delusion 
plays in all lesser goals. Men are content to 
strive for the lesser because they do not realize 
the actual emptiness of these ends until they are 
gained, and often not even then. But as human 
nature is in the last analysis everywhere the same, 
it is safe to say that ultimately the race will be 
educated to a plane from which every human be- 
ing will perceive that nothing short of the great- 
est attainment within reach can satisfy the human 
heart. 

And in the meantime, you ask? 

Perishing like chaff. But in the Universal 
there is no loss, and the store is ever replenished. 




Madame, 

I would 
find you 
p o u ring 
over your 
art pic- 
tures, im- "* 
mersed in the poets, in ecstacy over the ar- 
rival of a letter from your daughter, weighing 
with only too feminine and, what was to me, 
laughable a propensity to believe everything, the 
opinions of the world brought to you on this des- 
ert spot in the columns of your journal, or even, 
with a philosophical humor that well became you, 
attending to the necessary sewing and household 
duties. Hung with dainty curtains, decorated 
with sprigs of evergreen framing here and there 
one of your favorites among the living and the 
dead or among the imaginative productions of 
both, the place was light, cheerful, daintily cozy, 
but bespoke more, perhaps, the taste of your sis- 
ter than your own fancy ; for you were of a tem- 
per to acquiesce with little or no resistance, or if 



38 THE BARREN IDEAL 

resistance, futile, in the institutions of your more 
worldly-minded sister. It was your delicate way 
to seek out and treasure what pearls there may 
be in an existence more or less inextricably bound 
up with sorrow and certain to end in death; 
whereas your sister was governed by professions 
of that more metallic optimism which makes up 
in loyalty to desire what it lacks through disre- 
gard of fact. And then in the summer when the 
long-expected arrived! It seems that I had 
known her before, or had met her just once, cas- 
ually dancing twice in succession with her in that 
season when parties whirled by at a rate that left 
no specific impression. Consequently I did not 
remember Esther; and I never really came to 
know her for the reason that we had been too 
much prepared for each other and tried rather 
to embody what we felt ourselves to be in each 
other's opinion than to be truly natural. I knew 
her best and liked her best through her music. 
About a year ago after listening to a telelectric 
concert I made this memorandum: "Today I 
had my life read to me in Grieg's music . . . 
then, best of all, To Spring, reushering with its 
delicate cadences both the scene of the queer lit- 
tle desert house with the three women about and 
the brilliant impressions, yearnings, aspirations 
that my mind entertained then while Esther 
played, humming the air in the suppressed eager- 
ness of her voice; and our movement before and 



THE BARREN IDEAL 39 

after, our conversation, our satirical passes, our 
feigned humors, even the more material things 
such as the cakes and tea; — these made the mel- 
ancholy of this survey of things dead complete." 
And the evening you and Esther had dinner with 
me! It was a delightful occasion made merry in 
the moment by yours and my comments pre- 
sumably beyond the reach of our younger com- 
panion's intellect. But Esther was bright with 
no checks of false sentiment upon her vigorous 
reason. While you would acquiesce wonderingly 
over my presumptuous words, your daughter 
would challenge them, once or twice bringing me 
into straits from which only your timely inter- 
ference with a "Dear, you are too young to under- 
stand," or something of the kind, rescued me. 
Ah-h! 

Here, then, is an ideal within easy reach. We 
may be sceptical of all else and yet never for an 
instant doubt the validity of the Way of Char- 
acter. We approach it from both sides. An ex- 
amination of our experiences shows us that noth- 
ing less than an unselfish character making for 
an imperishable influence in the world answers 
to our true want; and we may be certain that 
whatever else the great purpose of the Universal 
may be, at least to improve man's lot in the 
world is hand in hand with if not a part of that 
purpose. 



40 THE BARREN IDEAL 

But it may be that even this will not satisfy 
us — that the time and the occasion will come 
when even the Way of Character will be incapa- 
ble of answering to our need. For we can not 
disguise the fact that this is a way essentially of 
action, and therefore appropriate especially to 
the middle years of life. But what of the con- 
templative years and the approach of death and 
those extremities of experience wherein brooding 
must have part? The thought of living on in 
an influence merely, however sublime and effect- 
ive that influence may be, an ideal at once so 
distant from and foreign to this personal heart 
of yours and mine, may not be sufficient to buoy 
up the spirit; and to the crippled and paralytic, 
born so, and others debilitated in youth, who not 
capable of action fall into this class for all life, 
as within impassable boundaries, what answer 
can we make? Can we quiet either our own un- 
satisfied yearnings or their totally unanswered 
questionings by claiming that it is the most that 
can be found? But life is still unexplained, will 
be the complaint. And since even those that pre- 
tend knowledge render their explanations ridic- 
ulous by claiming them for The Unknown, life 
must be left unexplained, can we answer? And 
is there nothing permanent for you and me? 
Nothing ; we have seen that the influence emanat- 
ing out of an unselfish character is most nearly 
so, but as character is bred and expresses itself 



THE BARREN IDEAL 41 

essentially in action, this loses meaning when the 
season of action is over, and to some it must ever 
mean nothing. But this is too unsatisfactory: 
surely there is something permanent somewhere. 
Why, of course there is — the life of humanity, the 
life of the world, of the Universe — Life, in a 
word, as we saw in the very beginning, Life is 
permanent. But what is this to you and me? 
What dare we, impermanent creatures, expect 
of this? 

Thus our final hope hangs upon the solution 
of this paradox, the importance of the perishable 
part to itself and its insignificance in the Indes- 
tructible Whole. But we have absolutely no 
warranty for expecting any sort of personal con- 
sciousness to continue hereafter out of the dis- 
solution of the organic components whose com- 
bination made consciousness possible here; and 
such a belief is incongruous with the phenomena 
of nature. The solution must consist, then, in an 
adjustment of the perishable part to the Imper- 
ishable Whole, indeed, in the finite grasp of the 
infinite fact of Immortality, whatever conse- 
quences there may be to this being restricted to 
those boundaries wherein we have our being — to 
this life here and now; and in this restriction we 
see at once the binding force of consequences 
which we are certain of experiencing, and the im- 
petus that their present realization must give to 
our effort. Here, then, in the intellectual grasp 



42 THE BARREN IDEAL 

is Immortality; but not an immortality for you 
and me — ah, no! just Immortality; and our en- 
joyment of it is here and now in the contempla- 
tion. But it amounts to more than this. Herein 
is a complete answer to our final hope, for herein 
may be had the satisfaction of setting our perish- 
able hearts upon the Imperishable — here and 
now this satisfaction. 

But what a solution is this! you decry. The 
knell of hope! the depths of pessimism! Not so: 
it is in that idealism which is ever seeking for 
something better than can be found here that 
hope is slowly killed; in those religions that des- 
pise this life for the sake of paradises hereafter 
that pessimism ranges uncontrolled. Stop all 
this, I say! More than this life there is nothing 
for you and me. And if in the face of this we 
will not be optimistic, then let us deny our own 
nature and perish: the Universal will send back 
organisms more happily adjusted. All that you 
and I may have or may not have is right now — 
this is our only chance; and far from turning us 
over to capricious senses, this thought invites to 
cautious deliberation and most careful choice. 
Ignorant of ourselves to begin with and never 
really coming to comprehend our constitution, we 
learn finally that our greatest good and only pos- 
sible contentment depends upon our conforming 
to nature as nature is arranged. And if in com- 
ing upon the fact that all life is dissolved into the 



THE BARREN IDEAL 43 

Universal and that there is no way around this, 
we reason that our satisfaction must consist in 
yielding ourselves willingly and, further, in set- 
ting our affection on that which is greater than 
we; though, accustomed as we are to deluding 
ourselves with pleasant superstitions, this proves 
to be somewhat of a shock, we have only to pic- 
ture the contrast of the two ways in the actual ex- 
perience of death to realize the abiding genuine- 
ness and irresistible efficacy of this Barren Ideal. 

For I admit that it is barren and my apology 
for it is that it approaches truth. But look close- 
ly at those others — those which, big with promise, 
in resolution lead to nothing — are not they the 
barren ones? And is not this one which prom- 
ises so little, but which in all that it promises is 
attainable, the one to which we can give our heart 
and reason ? The career of truth has always been 
disastrous in the world — truth has always seemed 
so lacking; but since it is truth it can not really 
be so, and if somewhere something is lacking, it 
must be in the feebleness of our own wills to ad- 
just themselves to what we see is and cannot be 
otherwise. 

But as to this Barren Ideal now, is it really 
so hard when we look into ourselves and see how 
little we are of our own intentions, how dull when 
left to our own resources, how futile in our grop- 
ings after happiness, which as an object we would 
have and yet are ever unable to gain? Experi- 



44 THE BARREN IDEAL 

ence again and again discloses unselfishness as 
the paradoxical pathway of self-bliss. Here, 
then, is the supreme unselfishness, the unfixing 
of the affection from that perishable self which 
we have found so feeble and resourceless, and the 
centering of it upon Universal Life which goes 
on and on through you and me and all others, but 
independent of any single one of us. Out of a 
general substance we come and back into it we 
go, and the profit is to the general substance in 
its unfathomable purpose, and to you and me 
wherein we willingly play the parts allotted to us 
and learn to lose ourselves in contemplating the 
whole. 

(3) 
There is nothing that must be done by you or 
me. The Maker of Life is never at such a loss 
that your efforts or mine or the efforts of any 
particular ones of us can not be dispensed with. 
Out of the general substance — out of our wrecks, 
it may be — the stuff will be fashioned to do all 
that has to be done. Our part is merely to seek 
our own bliss, this, when we have reasoned the 
matter out clearly so that we see in what our bliss 
really consists, — this amounting to a continuous 
courting of character making for an unselfish in- 
fluence in the world, as long as we are in the heat 
of action, and finally when our season is ending 
in letting go of self and fixing our affection upon 
the Universal; and it is hardly necessary to put 



THE BARREN IDEAL 45 

the conclusion into words, that by seeking our 
own bliss thus wisely we both do the will of the 
Universal and further its inscrutable purpose. At 
once we may relieve our conscience of the burden 
of great things to be done, the world's health and 
our own salvation hanging in the balance; these 
are mere delusions that derive their power di- 
rectly from the imagination. As far as the 
world's health is concerned, this is wholly inde- 
pendent of you and me; what is needed to be 
done will be done, and what does it matter 
whether by you or me or some other or, as the 
case probably is, by many of us cooperating with- 
out being able to explain precisely just what we 
are doing. And as to our salvation, there is noth- 
ing to that ; life is saved, not a spark of it is lost, 
but you and I have our time and are no more. 
Please, do not see these thoughts swaying towards 
indolence, but inviting to the composure and fix- 
ity of that happy equilibrium which our peace 
demands and which only can capacitate our fac- 
ulties for real accomplishment. 

The one matter that concerns us is to see these 
things clearly that we may adjust our lives ef- 
fectively to the possible ; first, that we may, gov- 
erned by the principles of the Way of Character, 
do what we find it within our peculiar power to 
do well; and second, that we may, according to 
the necessity of the Barren Ideal, loosen our af- 
fection from the perishable part which you or I 



46 THE BARREN IDEAL 

may represent, and fix it willingly, courageously, 
upon the Imperishable Whole. 

(4) 
But why make all this bother? Have all the 
human beings that have lived and died without 
seeing this then failed? Have not their lives been 
good? Is it not enough to live and act and die 
according to instinctive standards? These men 
have not hated their lives; comparatively but a 
few have complained of their deaths. I know of 
an old cobbler contentedly hammering away his 
years, the walls of his wee shop hung with say- 
ings of the Bible in large print, the paper now 
yellow and spotted with age, and he is journey- 
ing in serene stolidity towards his goal. But even 
many of those who are not propped up in false 
enthusiasms go easily enough to death, and scep- 
tics have died with the courage of martyrs. Why 
bother with more than this — life as the world uses 
it? Why, indeed! Even animal life is good. 
There is no creature, the pains and pleasures of 
whose existence operating through the five senses 
(and of man's aided by imagination) are not so 
proportioned as to leave upon the side of good a 
measure sufficient to continue the experiment. 
Nevertheless all life is sacrificed, of brutes and of 
by far the most of men unwillingly; but it is 
within the power of man to make of his life a 
willing sacrifice, and in this lies his joy. Here 
is the secret of it all — joy. Joy is the motive 



THE BARREN IDEAL 47 

power of the Universe : there is no effort put forth 
that has not joy as its direct or indirect end. This 
life is all we have: we make the most of it 
by giving it up. Why? Because it is our joy to 
do so; and when we see this clearly, there is no 
alternative. 

The Barren Ideal, then, is a Way of Joy, a 
way within the reach of all, even of those pre- 
destined to physical misery ; and if the one who is 
walking the Way of Character knows also the 
Way of Joy, there is no seeming misfortune that 
can befall him, no sacrifice, however great, that 
he may make in his loyalty to the first, but that 
the irresistible power of the second will recom- 
pense him a hundredfold. 





IV 

Madame, 

I am by 
the sea. Is 
it not won- 
derful? Here in a little niche 
of the cliff I have just eaten 
my lunch with the smelly wind 
off the sea-moss on the rocks 
below and the pungent odor 
of "Sunshine" seasoning every 
bite. I am here alone in a 
desolate spot like a sea bird, 
with no other reason for being 
here than the mere intangible 
joy of it all. But I presume 
the sea birds are tweaked about 
by their appetites much as 
men are in the world and that 
existence to them is a contin- 
uous hunting for food and 
resting. Still I like the com- 
parison; the sea bird appears 
to be drifting about just for 
the intangible joy of it all, and 
if he is not I am thus much 
ahead of him by virtue of hu- 
man nature. Merely to feel 
and taste the sea breeze, listen 



50 THE BARREN IDEAL 

to the continuous surging, look upon the 
clear endless expanse and a wave-carved point 
of coast exquisitely outlined in it — what fur- 
ther cause for joy need there be? The bar- 
baric joy of being constitutes to me the real day 
to do good in life. To rejoice in actual necessi- 
ties and at the same time to labor steadily on to- 
wards a serene death — such would be the secret 
of our bliss, Madame. Indeed, this present mo- 
ment is lacking only in you. But death — can 
it be that we preoccupy ourselves too much with 
thoughts of death? Esther would think so. I 
know your heart, I read you truly when I say 
that we wish simply to do what nature requires 
and the only boon we seek is contentment unto 
death — readiness to die; and when those whose 
eyes spread wide at this come to understand that 
the boon we seek is so precious that no detail of 
this human experience may be left unperfected 
and it still be gained — why, they too will court 
such death. No : there can never be too much pre- 
occupation with a certainty of experience such 
as death; and the putative optimism of cheerful- 
ness thinks that there can, only because its 
thoughtlessness shrouds death with an imaginary 
pall not at all appropriate to it. "If life be a 
pleasure, yet, since death is also sent by the hand 
of the same Master, neither should that displease 
us," reflected Michael Angelo; and the fact is 
that life can by no means be a pleasure until due 



THE BARREN IDEAL 51 

reservation has been made for death. . . . 
We would stay here by the sea until "the broad 
sun is sinking down in its tranquility," and we 
might read from Pater, or perhaps from Benson 
— since I know how fond you are of him ; and as 
to this latter I would show you how beautiful and 
vigorous a turn may be given to his still-water 
philosophy by excluding the equation of personal 
immortality. And though of yourself you do not 
come upon, or perhaps you consciously shun, this 
severe alteration; still you would believe me and 
burn with the fervor and power of this stronger 
ideal. . . . 

(2) 
Or — "You take away from me the very thing 
that gives meaning to my life — my self" Not 
so — no theory of mine does this; but if I show 
you how in the natural order of things it is neces- 
sary sooner or later for your identity to be re- 
dissolved into the Whole, and warn you that your 
only safety and possibility of joy is in anticipat- 
ing this, do you complain that the terms of nature 
are unjust? But I must have an explanation 
of life that makes answer to my personal hope. 
Very well ; go to Plato, to the Christian theology, 
to any of the religions ; you will find not one ex- 
planation merely, but many; make your choice. 
And if after trying one after another you still 
despair of establishing your human joy upon an 
unshakable basis, then come back to me; for the 



52 THE BARREN IDEAL 

Barren Ideal will still endure and to the heart 
purged of illusions, to the soul bared to itself, 
make all the answer that is needed. For here is 
no theory of things, no possible explanation of 
the Universe, no pretentions knowing of the Un- 
known ; indeed, before our sympathy can be large 
enough to reach out for this least of all ideals, we 
have to pass through a sort of religious despair. 
Because there is no certainty as to the truth of 
any of the numerous cosmogonies, and because it 
is more probable that all are in error than that 
any one is correct, we must have the courage to 
be sceptical of all of them, and seek a broader, 
vaguer, more abstract generalization from which 
to deduce and upon which to found principles of 
human life. Our method should not be to con- 
struct an ideal according to our frail human hopes 
and desires and then see if it will bear the test of 
experience, but on the contrary to gather general 
congruities of possible doctrine from an examina- 
tion of human experience and to restrain our 
hopes and desires from exceeding the boundaries 
of these. In other words, instead of taking hu- 
man longings at their face value and setting out 
to realize them whether it be possible or not, we 
should seek to find out just what is possible ac- 
cording to nature, and refashion our longings to 
fit this. But the fact is, only our trial of the 
former method and our despair of ever getting 
anywhere according to it will free us and per- 



THE BARREN IDEAL 53 

suade us to adopt this latter course, and the 
strongest sanction to the Barren Ideal is that it 
is come upon reluctantly; such is ever the career 
of Truth which is truth — to be come upon re- 
luctantly. But whatever proves to be truth, 
whatever is according to nature, must be best for 
us who aside from our imaginings are essentially 
true beings and whether we will or no governed 
by nature. 

But what is the criterion of all our strivings? 
By what do we measure all success and failure? 
Whether sensuous or refined to impalpability, 
there is but one criterion of reward and effort — 
that of joy. No scheme is valid or contains in 
itself the means of being attainable without joy 
as its attainable end and the whole pathway dec- 
orated with such garlands as being suggestive of 
the end become themselves joyful. Every effort 
that mankind has made, is making, or will make, 
is for the sake directly or indirectly of joy; and 
all philosophizing is simply to this end, being a 
way above the illusory ways of the senses merely, 
seeing what is and adjusting this to what we 
would have, or refashioning human desires to 
encompass and be satisfied with the attainable; 
that is, clearly defining the attainable and baring 
the truth of desires to themselves. The supreme 
joy is the grand adjustment to life — the balanc- 
ing of human hope to natural possibility, of the 



54 THE BARREN IDEAL 

inner world of thought and ideals to the outer 
world of action and experience, and this adjust- 
ment accomplished all the little necessary acts of 
human life glow with a burnished splendor. For 
Truth consists in an adjustment which takes cog- 
nizance of the conditions upon which we have life 
and at the same time sanctions the sensuous joy 
of our days. 

Ha! we have stolen the birdie's secret of joy, 
the child's, the secret of the joy of all beings that 
are unconscious of self; and as self -consciousness 
is a stage in development higher, so may we adapt 
this secret to a greater realization of joy. For 
what else is it that makes birds and children re- 
joice in being except the serene adjustment of 
their lives to what nature has given them? You 
will find no pessimists among the animals; they 
accept life eagerly for what it is; a measure of 
good is always on the side of being: the first in- 
stinct of nature is to live and to persist in living. 
But man's propensity for imaginary ecstacies in- 
clines him to employ his superior faculty of rea- 
son to show how human life handicapped in this 
way and that, limited so and so and subject to 
such and such inexorable conditions, is by no 
means a desirable thing to have; and if, never- 
theless, we persist in having it, — as somehow 
against all such reasoning we do, — it must be for 
the sake of more desirable planes of existence 



THE BARREN IDEAL 55 

hereafter. Here in the first instance we have no- 
men, and in the second half -men. It takes some 
such false knowledge as this to make us dissatis- 
fied with our lot. As to those ills, so-called, such 
as sickness, decline, natural catastrophe, death, 
which as the Stoics say, happen to the good and 
bad alike and are therefore to be classified as 
matters indifferent, — if we consider them as evils, 
we subscribe unequivocally to a pessimism of life, 
since these matters are no more nor less than the 
conditions upon which we have life, which, not to 
accept, is to deny our own instinct with a childish 
and timid stubborness. In constructing a scheme 
of life, then, the only valid method is to lay our 
foundation of these stones — these hard facts of 
the actual conditions upon which we have life, 
which if we will not accept as good, our only al- 
ternative — if we will continue to live notwith- 
standing — is to ensalve our reason to the imag- 
ination, overturn the natural felicity of our or- 
ganization, upon which the virility of our facul- 
ties depends, and lose the possibility of knowing 
that real joy of being which every creature of na- 
ture may experience according to its capacity. 

The thing needed, then, to insure our joy, 
that of which joy is an inevitable consequence, is 
a conscious and deliberate adjustment to the con- 
ditions upon which we have life and lose it — an 
adjustment which takes into account everything 



56 THE BARREN IDEAL 

that can happen to us here, providing in the inner 
world of will antidotes and felicitous moderators 
for everything that can take place in the outer 
world of experience — an adjustment not only to 
the experience of living but also to the experience 
of dying and the contemplative part that the 
heart will require. It is an adjustment of the 
hopes and desires and expectations by means of 
the will to the realizable facts of experience. We 
have likened this to the happily disposed position 
of birds and children — life unconscious of self; 
but the comparison is true only as regards the 
effect. Child life is joyful because it is wholly 
governed by and necessarily obedient to the con- 
ditions of nature; self-conscious life may become 
joyful by ceasing from its antagonism to the con- 
ditions of nature, by accepting them and wilfully 
rendering itself obedient to them. But the joy 
of the child is not to be compared with the joy 
attainable by the clear-seeing man or woman of 
ripened powers and capacities. 

Youth is joyful: youth is adjusted to life: 
youth is joyful because it is adjusted to life. 
Now as we grow older we upset of necessity this 
adjustment of youth's and consequently lose the 
joy; but if we can effect an adjustment of our 
maturer years of the awakened intellect we shall 
repossess ourselves of joy. But we must be sure 
to see that the later adjustment can not by any 
possible means be a reversion to the adjustment 



THE BARREN IDEAL 57 

of youth. That of youth was purely animalistic 
in an eager, vigorous acceptance of the present 
moment at its face value with a happy careless- 
ness of responsibilities and of evil consequences, 
necessarily vague and shadowy, which the prom- 
ise of wiser years may easily be trusted to cope 
with. Experience upsets this adjustment dis- 
covering much of the stuff of which it consisted 
to be empty and illusory. The later adjustment 
at which we must arrive in order to regain joy 
must take account of all the teachings of experi- 
ence, must replace what has been proved illusory 
or empty with things real and substantial, and 
must balance the inner world of the intellect and 
all its refined needs with the outer world of ex- 
perience, having in reserve antidotes for every- 
thing that can happen to us there — all the chance 
and mischance of life through success and failure, 
prosperity and adversity, health and affliction, up 
to death itself. But we must never let the notion 
that this later adjustment must somehow claim 
for itself the pleasant sensuous usages of youth 
creep into our thoughts to disturb us. The ani- 
malistic adjustment of youth can not be pre- 
served beyond the season of dormant intellect 
and unaroused reason, and to go with it notwith- 
standing is to confound the teachings of experi- 
ence and by mistrust to undermine the faculties; 
obviously it can not be reverted to at the climax 
of a philosophical scheme; our adjustment truly 



58 THE BARREN IDEAL 

to be such must consist of the principles and data 
of a scheme which when religiously lived up to 
will bring us, not certainly the eager, irresponsi- 
ble joy of youth, but one like it, a pure joy in 
being and a joy in doing the little and big neces- 
sary tasks according to nature, with the possi- 
bility of moving and being anywhere — of laugh- 
ing and frolicing with youth, of receiving with 
undisturbed equanimity the successes and fail- 
ures of middle life, and of acquiescing contented- 
ly in death. The secret of this later adjustment 
is to see everything precisely as it is, illusion as 
illusion, reality as reality, and of apportioning 
to each thing its due value — of dwelling aloof in 
a serene composure that can not be disturbed 
either by the sympathetic exercise of senses with 
the youthful or by the ascetic cultivation of vir- 
tue with the sages. 

(6) 
You may ask now just what the data of such 
a scheme may be. I will refer you to the fore- 
going chapters. True, we did not there seek to 
discover what is required of us by nature ; on the 
contrary we sought to find out what constitutes 
our own want. We now see that the Way of 
Character and the Barren Ideal are the necessary 
conditions of our life, that in these is expressed 
what is required of us, that from these are read- 
ily deducible the data and principles according 
to which we may effect an adjustment with na- 



THE BARREN IDEAL 59 

ture and reap the joy of being consequent there- 
upon. It had not required much acumen to sur- 
mise that in an orderly world whatever upon a 
careful investigation of experience should prove 
to be our true want would likewise prove to be 
the necessary conditions of true and abiding joy; 
and contrariwise that what is required of us in 
order to find true joy would correspond exactly 
with our true desires bared to themselves. Fin- 
ally, if what we want proves to be the same as 
what nature requires of us, surely we need no 
further warranty that this accords with the in- 
scrutable purpose of Universal Life. 




Madame, 

Once you ven- 
tured to give me 
- — - a bit of mother- 

ly advice. "And 
you will not love me less," you began, in 
the simple security of your years. You 
knew, then, from my manner towards 
you and I already loved you; and if 
I remember rightly I loved you the 
more for the advice — whatever it was! I'm 
sure I followed it. But at that time the 
cold radical fluid was stealing into my veins, 
and my actions must have puzzled you, perhaps 
a little grieved you. Chance made of her parts, 
as sometimes happens, what appeared to be a 
design and thrust this between us. There was 
that incident of the dance. I thought how I 
would laughingly talk of it with you, — "Esther 
were better off out under the stars alone with her 
life and what she may or may not make of it." 
But I never had the courage even to broach the 
subject — even to ask whether or not she had 
gone, as in my note I expressed the hope she 



62 THE BARREN IDEAL 

would regardless of me. . . That day as in my 
big corduroys — announcing the first chill of au- 
tumn — I was out vigorously gathering brush and 
piling it up by the door as for winter, when with 
my plans all failing I knew of a certainty that I 
should not be there, — "Some one will be here," 
I sang to myself, adhering to my philosophy of 
indifference, — you and Esther appeared as out 
for a stroll, casually thinking to return a book of 
mine. I invited you in without urging; to sit in 
the hammock, to take tea — all without urging. 
You declined with that gentleness combined with 
polite firmness which you knew so well how to 
command. You spoke of liking the arroyos 
thereabouts, — arroyos that I had taught you to 
love! I laid the book upon the stone step. I 
could not offer to accompany you; my pride as 
well as my philosophy (inconsistent combina- 
tion!) forbade me. From my brush-gathering 
I watched you ascend my little trail and pass 
slowly out of sight across the ridge. What heart- 
ache! But strong in my philosophy, unwasted 
as yet by wearying experiences, I was propped 
up in the splendor of my radical ideal, which was 
so true to me that in my courageous moments — 
and I drilled myself to keep all such — I was al- 
most eager to clash head-on with misfortune. I 
piled up wood that I was certain I should never 
use and I watched you disappear over the ridge 
without a backward glance or wave of the hand, 



THE BARREN IDEAL 63 

— this with feigned serenity unpermitting of even 
a sigh! 

But it is not given us so to renounce our affec- 
tions and the customs of our nature — not when 
the truth we seek is that only real and attainable 
truth blent of the human and the divine. In the 
various religions the call to self-immolation, the 
practice of asceticism, the cultivation of virtue, 
have their supposed incentive in improved condi- 
tions of future being or rewards hereafter. "He 
that loseth his life shall find it" and the prevail- 
ing pessimism as to this life bred in devout souls 
by the conflict of base and lofty desires, have led 
how many to renounce or confound this present 
state, which is all that any one has, for the sake 
of an imaginary state hereafter! Self-sacrifice 
is thus bereft of its genuineness; for who can 
claim that there is sacrifice in that which is merely 
one side of a bargain? And what if the bargain 
is entirely with one's own imagination? Here the 
purest piety of a selfless heart is confounded and 
rendered utterly futile in a narrow region of ef- 
fort confined wholly to self. But in seeking to 
find out what is required of us, so then to adjust 
ourselves to nature upon her own terms, we learn 
that we can free ourselves of the pall hanging 
over us in unwilling death by so setting our af- 
fection upon the Whole, into which we are shortly 
to be dissolved, as to convert death into a willing 



64 THE BARREN IDEAL 

experience ; and far from discovering in this any 
incentive to hasten death, the passing hours are 
made all the dearer by the freedom which an 
adjustment to the inevitable entails. Life is 
made sweeter, fresher, truer by our willingness 
to stay or to go just as nature desires; while we 
stay, by living our days and doing our acts ac- 
cording to the conditions laid down by her ; when 
we go, by quieting our hearts with the contem- 
plation that so it should be. But the only incen- 
tive for arriving at this adjustment is the poise 
and serenity, the felicity and joy that it brings 
in the present. Adjusted to the conditions of 
life, however somber the terms may appear, our 
faculties are at once freed and invigorated to ex- 
ert themselves to the very limit of their poten- 
tialities. It was a syllogism of the Emperor Au- 
relius that what is good for the Universal must 
be good for the parts of the Universal ; that since 
the Universal is preserved by the changes of 
things compounded, by the operations of death, 
therefore for us, parts of the Universal, death is 
good. But may it not be that our willingness to 
this end, canceling all antagonism with nature, 
will actually operate towards fostering life? 
Since surely the Universal profits more by our 
living than by our dying, and the harmony of an 
adjustment will tend directly to carry our lives 
effectively and blithely through to seasonable 
conclusions ! 



THE BARREN IDEAL 65 

Yes,, the rewards in this scheme are here and 
now; in this respect it is as far removed from 
those enervating systems of rewards hereafter or 
future planes of being as its requirement of utter 
selflessness now and forever, in letting go of the 
part to embrace the All, is unapproachably dis- 
tant from the calculating surrender of self here 
for the possession of a better self hereafter. You 
may say that this latter system, since it intro- 
duces unselfishness into the world, is therefore 
not without its effectiveness, and I will agree. 
But on what a little scale compared to that of a 
scheme which may inspire one to pour out the 
whole energy of one's life once and for all in a 
powerful stream of selflessness without hope or 
need of other reward than the immediate joy of 
so doing! But what of the advocate of the other 
way? Though his unselfish acts may bear some 
fruit in the world, what of the individual himself, 
imagining that he is making some unwonted sac- 
rifice, half-asleep in this life through the promise 
of another? To him it is a palpable loss, a loss 
of the truest spiritual and material benefits that 
a human being may know, — the material trans- 
figured by the spiritual, — his putative reward in 
lieu of this being imaginative ecstacies, possibly, 
which can not be sustained, and which surely and 
inevitably carry him towards insanity. 

Under the requirements of an adjustment to 
nature the need of the virtuous and irreproach- 



66 THE BARREN IDEAL 

able character remains unchanged; but here we 
cultivate virtue and perfection in all things sim- 
plv as the one and only way to make the most 
of our days and win contentment unto death. 
Not to prepare ourselves for some future world 
in which vou and I as entities shall have part ac- 
cording to our deserts, but simplv because it is 
the wav here and now to make the most of all 
that we have: — therefore the dvnamics of this 
scheme are not to be resisted. This is all; either 
we will make the most of it or we will not, our 
contentment being the thing at stake. 

I have said that it is within the power of man 
to make of his life a willing sacrifice and that in 
this lies his iov: and in this day of imperfect so- 
cial conditions this doctrine mav be literally true 
for such as feel themselves able to effect con- 
ditions for the better: but it is a datum essen- 
tially of later vears, something to be prepared 
for and to look forward to at any time, but under 
normal social conditions actually to be called into 
use only towards the natural conclusion of a life ; 
it is a consummation of age. There is no scheme 
of conduct applicable to the whole of a human 
life — unless it be that scheme which acknowl- 
edges the seasons, youth, maturity and old age, 
apportioning to each a suitable philosophy. Hu- 
man beings must have the fullest use of the life 
provided for human beings by nature. In youth 



THE BARREN IDEAL 67 

this consists in more or less of a preparation for 
later years, including a rather complete abandon- 
ment to harmless sensuous joys; in middle life 
or maturity, when the sensuous exercises of youth, 
if continued, become perverted and harmful in 
their consequences, in fashioning an effectively 
unselfish character ; and in old age in establishing 
a counterbalance against death. This is the nat- 
ural course which all should go. Certainly our 
philosophic scheme may be grasped by any one 
who is sobered to a dispassionate consideration 
of the values of life — by anyone for whom the 
haze of delusion has lifted. But whether that one 
may take for himself this natural, seasonable in- 
dulgence or not depends upon his peculiarities 
of constitution. The great masses of people in 
the world are debarred from this simple, happy 
use of life, first, by their inability to procure un- 
der existing conditions the material benefits that 
all need and that nature intended all should have, 
and second, though corollary to the first, through 
missing the education essential to a just estimate 
of what is worth while in life. If, now, the one 
who has grasped the scheme has it within his 
power to improve the lot of these, his fellow be- 
ings, herein consists his peculiar blessedness, an 
intellectual and spiritual refinement of happiness. 
But if nothing out of the ordinary lies within his 
reach, nothing more than what the wholesome in- 
fluence of his character will accomplish in the 



68 THE BARREN IDEAL 

ordinary walks of life, then, though he see the 
scheme in its completeness, still is there no fur- 
ther call upon him than to lead his life in the 
simple wholesome way that nature intended; for 
under normal conditions in which the material 
welfare and the opportunity of all are secure, 
with the necessity of the Adjustment under- 
stood, still there is nothing better for human be- 
ings than the fullest use of human life as it is 
provided for them according to nature. 

Such is the reward of our scheme; not bliss in 
a life hereafter, but happiness in this world in a 
normal use of the life provided for us by nature, 
and those of us that are called upon to sacrifice 
this present palpable good in a life of struggle 
against the injustice in present human affairs, 
seek no other boon than this for our fellow beings. 
The final good to which life should lead is simply 
the healthy and normal unimpeded use of this 
life as nature has arranged it. This seems little 
and almost unworthy in comparison to the ecsta- 
cies here and paradises hereafter promised in sub- 
lime theories; but it becomes great and worthy 
readily enough when we see that never, in our 
history, has the world realized it. But it is great 
and worthy intrinsically to such of us as have 
glimpsed the great joy potential in this life when 
the heart is aroused to seek out its true want and 
the reason sobered to adjust its dominions to the 
bounds prescribed by nature. 



THE BARREN IDEAL 69 

Madame, I think of you by my fireside, the 
soft glow upon your features making them re- 
sponsive, no longer to any cares or burdens of 
time, but to the ideals that quiver on the border 
of utterance, — there in the pure atmosphere of 
my home, peopled as it was with my dreams and 
aspirations, I see you, your arm eloquently raised 
before the fire, so that its shadow passes across 
my desk, finding expression for the thoughts that 
the atmosphere of my simple desert cabin was 
created to woo. 

There in my home I saw you thus. 

I have no home now; but in whatever home I 
dream of having, there do I see you still. 



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